Gen Z is roughly the age group of today’s teenagers. There were a couple of surveys at the end of 2017, one by PWC and one by Piper Jaffray, that taken together showed something very interesting for retailers.
The first by Piper Jaffray said that 49% of Gen Z said Amazon was their favorite website to shop from when online. Well, OK. Not surprising other than that figure is lower than one might expect. These kids grew up with Amazon at their fingertips after all.
The PWC survey cast those numbers into a new light. They found that 40% of their Gen Z survey were only going to shop in brick-and-mortar stores for the holidays. Even more eye opening, 81% of the surveyed teens said that they preferred to shop in stores than online. No other generation came close to this percentage.
It’s interesting that the generation that grew up online is actually more into shopping in a store with things that they can touch and interact with for real. Perhaps the ultimate social network is in the real world; shopping with your friends and experiencing all that a great retail experience can offer. That’s speculation but it doesn’t seem like a stretch if you think back to your own teen years. It also reinforces the idea of creating great retail experiences for customers so that the activity of shopping is fun and involves all the senses in a way that no virtual world can – at least not yet.
Keep your store design fresh, your displays interesting and encourage interaction. Your customer has five senses and when you engage them (the customer and their senses) you will create an environment that pulls in customers, young and old.
Let’s hear it for Gen Z!
